Those people that join teams late and go tearing up the board entering answers.

I think team members should be announced at the beginning of the contest, and nobody should be allowed to join late in the above manner.

I do think it's a good idea that teams should declare their members before the contest begins and no-one be allowed to join a team mid-way. (I'm well aware that this happened in my team during PT1 but that doesn't mean to say that I agree it's right). However, should Player X want to work with a team but knows he/she won't be around for the beginning of the contest, I think it perfectly acceptable for him/her to be allowed to 'catch up' if he has been declared a member of the team before the contest begins.

Having said that, I know of many teams that have formed halfway through a contest from solo players that have got to know each other and have decided they stand a better chance working together. I can't see that it would be fair or possible to prevent this from happening.

You can sit here making rules till the cows come home but in the end, it's down to riddlers to stick to those rules to make a contest successful. As with everything, there will be those who see a rule as perfectly fair and others to whom the same rule appears unfair. I think it's probably best to avoid having too many hard and fast rules and just hope that common sense prevails._________________----oOo----

At the moment it's looking like the only agreed and fair thing to do is to have teams (and only those who volunteer) to have their names grouped as one in the stats. This at least provides some respite for individuals, because some teams *will* want do this. There will be others that *won't*, but at least no one will feel like they are "breaking rules" in any way if it is all voluntary. The last thing we want to do is try and force people to behave in a certain way.

Stretham_________________Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy?
I don't know and I don't care!

This may or may not have been requested in this thread, but it seems a sensible place to put it. If you go to the "hall of fame" on any contest now, it will show you those who've completed a contest in order of completion together with a timestamp of when they finished. Apologies that this wasn't done a lot sooner as I know it was requested quite a while ago. But my memory's not what it used to be.

...

And I reckon my memory's geting worse as well.

Stretham_________________Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy?
I don't know and I don't care!

We've made a small change to the stats page - each contest should now display everything correctly with no blank lines or "Dummy" puzzles. If anybody sees any odd behaviour could you let us know please?

Stretham_________________Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy?
I don't know and I don't care!